I just wanted to thank all the helpful people around here! My family took its first Amtrak trip a few weeks ago (which was *great*) and thanks to the helpful people at flyertalk we earned over 10,000 AGR points. Three of us got the 3000 point sign up bonus that someone posted over the summer, plus we got double miles for our travel portion. There is also another bunch of points that I don't know why we got.. maybe an online booking bonus or an inital sign up bonus.

All this for a trip we were going to do anyway!!

My family of four took the Empire Builder from Seattle to Williston, ND and we loved it. It was myself, my husband and our two sons, 3 1/2 & 11 months sharing one of the family rooms. The family room was fabulous as you have windows on both sides of the train and there is enough floor space for the kids to play. Our three year old was totally facinated by the dinning car, he just loved the idea of eating on the train. Although I think getting to sleep in a top bunk with a ladder was his absolute favorite thing about the trip. The only thing about it that was not so great was traveling with a kid who still sleeps in a crib. We had a heck of a time getting the 11 month old to sleep, eventually he ended up sleeping with one of us on the wider lower bunk.

We will definately do it again when the kids are older, or we may take the train to California.